mirrors

time is one of those things you hope you can forget like everything else - like the way you'd forget if you need to buy more milk at the grocery store or maybe you forgot to lock your door before leaving the house. normal things you forget about and leave in the back of your mind - the same way i hope that time itself would forget about me.

everyday feels like a new wrinkle in my skin and the irreversible greed of the past in each time that i look into the mirror. there's something about remembering the past times i've looked in mirrors. i remember staring at a mirror when i was in high school getting ready for my graduation, buttoning up my shirt before my first day of work at my new job, and double checking if i have any shaving cream before i went on a date. but i also think about the time i got a pep talk from you in the mirror which i always thought was just a thing in movies.

it's just weird to think about the mass amount of information i have on just time alone. different apartment addresses to the point i'm forgetting, old phones and laptops in drawers, and the photos i see of my parents from years back as i compare to them now.

i have a nephew and i don't really know how to actually rationalize that in my head. he's 2. it was weird to think about when my sister moved out of the house on her own. getting her (now husband) to introduce himself to me over playing mario kart. and now married, renting a house with a kid.

thinking about that and everything around me feels suffocating, as if i'm doing all of this wrong. people keep saying that everyone goes through life at a different pace. different paths. different... everything. but as some point you have to realize that in the end, it's mostly the same.

i'm supposed to be in my 30s soon and by everyone i've met, i have to have some things decently together. like i'm supposed to buy a house and decide which cabinets go well with the counter. i'm supposed to be debt free and have a great credit score. maybe even have a kid or two.

i know this is what i'm supposed to want and be, something that's for some reason on everyone's mind when they speak to me.

however i just don't know how to break it to anyone, even you, that this isn't something i want. maybe i'll even say it point blank if you ask, but at the same time, i don't know if i really have a choice. if i had a choice, i'd go back and spend more time in the mirror adjusting my graduation cap. you'd be giving me another pep talk and maybe i'd be double checking for stubble again.

every mirror i can think about feels better than the one in my new apartment, shared by 3 other guys in a random part of new york. every other mirror felt like home, felt warm, and like i knew of where i was at. now i have no idea what's next and i don't think time will ever give me a choice of what i actually want to be next.